It took mere minutes for the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to devolve into chaos Tuesday. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined with protesters to interrupt Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee chairman, during his opening statement, and the first hour of the hearing was quickly swallowed up by crosstalk.

The "mob rule" vibe, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called it at one point, led to some noteworthy whispered quips, as lawmakers kept reacting off-camera to the proceedings with their microphones still turned on. In the midst of some lively protests, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) can be overheard encouraging Grassley to "demand order," while at one point Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) noted reporting from NBC News' Kasie Hunt that the Democrats' disruption had been coordinated via a phone call Monday. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was not impressed with Tillis' point, muttering, "This is outrageous."

.@SenThomTillis on report that @SenateDems plotted coordinated protest strategy: "None of the members on this committee participated in that phone call or that strategy before the documents were released yesterday? Are you suggesting that this allegation is false?" #SCOTUSpic.twitter.com/3soLcvMupj

After Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said the hearing should be held according to the law, Cornyn contended that Democrats would be "held in contempt of court" for their behavior. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was quick to react:

If he is ever impeached, "it's your fault 'cause you didn't go out to vote — that's the only way it could happen," he said. "I'll be the only president in history, they'll say, 'What a job he's done! By the way, we're impeaching him.'" Trump was in Billings to campaign for Matt Rosendale, the state auditor running for Senate, but most of the time, he focused on himself and Democrats, including those who are "looking like fools" during Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

He compared his speeches to the Gettysburg Address, claiming that in Abraham Lincoln's day, the 16th president was "ridiculed" and "excoriated" by the "fake news — there was fake news before." Trump also said he was just told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was saying "terrific things about me," and they both have "respect" for each other. When it comes to the media, "you can't win, but we're winning," he declared. "I'm president, your president, we're winning." People may say he's mentally unfit, Trump told the crowd, but could someone not of sound mind be able to speak at rallies for 90 minutes, often "without any notes?" he asked, later admitting, "I think I'm pretty competent." Catherine Garcia

The confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been most notable for what Kavanaugh has refused to say: What he believes to be the correct law on abortion rights, gay rights, same-sex marriage, presidential executive authority, immigration, and a host of other timely subjects. "One of the major concerns with Brett Kavanaugh is that Trump might have nominated him specifically because Kavanaugh believes sitting presidents shouldn't be subpoenaed or indicted," Trevor Noah said on Thursday's Daily Show. "And some people are worried that Kavanaugh might even have made a deal with Trump's [former] personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, basically saying we'll put you on the court if you promise to protect the president from Robert Mueller."

"Now, we don't know if Kavanaugh actually met with Trump's lawyer, but when California Sen. Kamala Harris asked him about it yesterday, Kavanaugh did himself no favors," Noah said, playing part of their intense and kind of bizarre back-and-forth. "Wow, Kavanaugh did not look good in that exchange. It's like if they asked a suspect at a murder trial, 'Where were you on the night of the 13th?' and he was like, 'Uhhh, where shouldn't I have been? Wherever the murder happened, that's where I was.'" Noah was not persuaded by Kavanaugh hiding behind "precedent" to avoid answering questions on abortion rights, but he was impressed with Harris' pointed question to him on that subject.

President Trump and White House aides have come up with a list of roughly 12 people suspected of being behind the anonymous op-ed published Wednesday by The New York Times, an outside adviser told the Times on Thursday.

The op-ed, written by a senior administration official, called Trump's leadership style "impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective," and the author said there is a "quiet resistance" underway by staffers trying to protect the country from Trump's "half-baked, ill-informed, and occasionally reckless decisions." White House officials spent Thursday calling different departments to ask Cabinet secretaries if they were responsible for the op-ed, the Times reports, and they all said no.

Several West Wing officials are especially suspicious of Vice President Mike Pence and his staff, and they were not persuaded by his denial, White House officials told the Times. There's also been talk of having senior officials sign affidavits swearing they did not write the op-ed. Read more about the panicked response at The New York Times.Catherine Garcia

She's more than just a girl — in fact, filmmaker Michael Moore has a theory that Gwen Stefani may be the person most responsible for getting President Trump into the White House.

Stefani wears a lot of hats — she's a solo pop star, No Doubt's frontwoman, a fashion designer, and a judge on The Voice. Her gig on the singing competition is why Moore believes Stefani launched the Trump presidency, he told The Hollywood Reporter. As Moore sees it, Trump likely learned NBC paid Stefani more to be a judge on The Voice than he received hosting The Apprentice, so he announced from Trump Tower he was running for president to show the network how famous he was and how much attention he could receive.

"He'd been talking about running for president since 1988, but he didn't really want to be president," Moore said. "There's no penthouse in the White House. And he doesn't want to live in a black city. He was trying to pit NBC against another network, but it just went off the rails." Trump ended up getting dropped by NBC after saying Mexico was sending rapists to the United States, but Moore said by that time, he was too attached to the crowds coming to his rallies and the nonstop media coverage, and turned his joke candidacy into a real one. Read more about Moore's theory, and his new documentary for Pocket Chic Digital Print Hoodie Tree Sleeve Couple Long Fahrenheit 11/9, at The Hollywood Reporter.Catherine Garcia

It was the third day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and Kavanaugh was responding to a question asked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) about the 2015 Priests for Life v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services case he heard while on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Priests for Life objected to the Affordable Care Act requirement that all health insurance plans cover contraception for employees, asserting that Plan B and IUDs are not birth control, but instead cause abortions.

Sleeve Couple Hoodie Print for Long Pocket Tree Chic Digital Kavanaugh, who dissented from the majority that ruled in favor of the Obama administration, told Cruz it "quite clearly" seemed the contraception mandate was a "substantial burden on their religious exercise." Had Priests for Life filled out a form asking the government to fund the contraceptives, Kavanaugh added, this workaround would still have made them "complicit in the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to."

The company said both @realalexjones and @infowars were banned from Twitter and Periscope "based on new reports of tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts' past violations." Twitter's policy prohibits users from making "excessively aggressive insults that target an individual, including content that contains slurs or similar language."

Jones, who had about 896,000 followers before getting booted from Twitter, spent his Wednesday in Washington, where he attended a Senate hearing featuring Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, then got into an argument with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). He also confronted CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, telling him he has "the eyes of a rat," streaming the encounter on Periscope. Jones was booted from Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple last month. Catherine Garcia

On Thursday, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right Brazilian presidential candidate, was stabbed in Minas Gerais while campaigning, his son tweeted.

Flavio Bolsonaro said his father sustained damage to his liver, lung, and intestine. "He lost a lot of blood," he said, and was "almost dead" when he arrived at a local hospital. Bolsonaro's running mate, Gen. Antonio Hamilton Mourao, told Reuters he is now in serious but stable condition. "He underwent surgery, which was successful and he is doing okay," Mourao said. "But his state remains delicate."

Video recorded during Bolsonaro's campaign stop shows him being carried on a person's shoulders, surrounded by supporters. A knife is then seen being raised in the air, then plunging into Bolsonaro's abdomen, Reuters reports. Brazil's Federal Police released a statement saying officers were accompanying Bolsonaro when the attack took place, and the "aggressor" was caught and detained. The incident is now under investigation. Catherine GarciaBoutique Boutique H amp;M H Shorts amp;M PUEzPqrw

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for example, said that it is "laughable" to think he could be the author. Spoken like a possible suspect, right? In light of the White House "witch hunt" to determine who wrote the op-ed, a vintage Wall Street Journal headline resurfaced Thursday as readers remembered a similarly mysterious source: Deep Throat.

"If you drink scotch, smoke, and read, maybe you're 'Deep Throat,'" the Journal wrote. "Almost anyone can qualify as capital tries to guess Watergate story source." Deep Throat was the name of the source who offered key information to journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they investigated the Watergate scandal. Deep Throat ultimately turned out to be FBI Associate Director Mark Felt — but in June 1974, Felt denied that he was the source.

"Felt says he isn't now, nor has he ever been, Deep Throat," reads the article. "Of course, says the former acting associate director of the FBI, if he really were Deep Throat, you'd hardly expect him to admit it, now would you? Not that he is, Mr. Felt quickly adds."

The article points out that Felt, and others, aren't likely to "just blurt out" that they are responsible for bringing an administration "to its knees." So simply asking officials whether they authored the piece may not lead to the truth — and maybe Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had the right idea in taking more drastic measures. Tee Short Sleeve Printed Round Neck Note xXwqY7px

A "senior official in the Trump administration" wrote an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday, claiming there's a "resistance" within the White House. Amateur detectives want to know who it is. There are dozens of potential culprits, but these administration officials have so far denied responsibility. Kathryn Krawczyk

Vice President Mike Pence. The vice president is "above such amateur acts," his communications director tweeted Thursday morning.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The top diplomat told reporters a "disgruntled, deceptive bad actor" wrote the letter, but it wasn't him, per NBC News.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis. A Pentagon spokeswoman simply told Reuters that "it was not [Mattis'] op-ed."

Burt Reynolds, the legendary actor who brought his trademark swagger to dozens of films and TV shows over a decades-long career, has died at the age of 82.

Reynolds' manager, Erik Kritzer, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the actor died Thursday morning at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida. TMZ is reporting that Reynolds went into cardiac arrest and that his family was by his side when he died. The actor had been dealing with various health issues over the past few years, having had heart surgery in 2010 and having been hospitalized with flu symptoms in 2013, People reports.

Born in 1936, Reynolds rose to fame in part due to his role as Quint Asper on Gunsmoke, which helped him transition into an extraordinarily successful movie career. While he made his film debut in 1961, it was 1972's Deliverance that kickstarted a truly phenomenal run for the actor, who was quite prolific throughout the 1970s and 1980s, starring in back-to-back hit action and comedy films like Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run. He was so prolific, in fact, that he at one time had four separate movies in theaters at once, The Hollywood Reporter notes. In 1997, Reynolds was nominated for his first and only Academy Award for playing porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights.

Reynolds had not stopped working in recent years, and he had been announced as part of the cast of Quentin Tarantino's new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which hits theaters in July 2019. However, Reynolds had not yet filmed his scenes, having been scheduled to do so in a few weeks, and thus the role will need to be recast, St John's Promotion Bay John's Bay Promotion St ff15qBrendan Morrow

A massive investigation and report into Pennsylvania's Catholic churches exposed over 1,000 abuse allegations against 300 priests last month. It drew apologies from as far up as the Vatican, but also led victims around the world to share their stories and sparked incredible condemnation of the Catholic Church.

Underwood's announcement addressed the Pennsylvania revelations and encouraged New York victims to report their stories even if they happened years ago. And in a telling display of where the investigation might be headed, Underwood reportedly sent subpoenas to the seven Catholic dioceses of New York state and the archdiocese in New York City, per AP. They request abuse allegations, records of churches paying off victims, and anything else that internal church investigations dug up.

Church leaders have said they'll cooperate with Underwood's civil investigation even if it transforms into a criminal one, AP reports. The attorney general's office is also working with local prosecutors, who can launch criminal investigations within their jurisdictions. Kathryn Krawczyk

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) thinks a quick sit down for a polygraph test would be faster than asking every White House official whether they wrote in The New York Times that President Trump is "amoral." He told reporters on Thursday: "I think if you have a security clearance in the White House I think it would be acceptable to use a lie detector test and ask people whether they are talking to the media against the policy of the White House," reports CNN.

Paul, who previously suggested the use of lie detector tests to determine who leaked transcripts of communications between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian ambassador, said it was important to figure out who wrote the op-ed this week. Some experts disagree that lie detector tests are effective, but Paul said they are used on CIA and FBI agents, so they should be used on administration officials, too. "This could be very dangerous if the person who is talking to the media is actually revealing national security secrets," he said. "So yes, I think we need to get to the bottom of it." Tee Short Sleeve Printed Round Neck Note xXwqY7px

Just weeks after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the ironically unpopular idea of bringing a "best popular film" category to the Oscars, the concept is being abandoned — at least for now.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the Academy said Thursday that the new award, which was intended to recognize "outstanding achievement in popular film" in a category separate from Best Picture, will no longer be introduced at the 2019 Oscars as originally planned. Based on the "wide range of reactions" the announcement received in August, "further discussion with our members" is needed before the award can be implemented, Academy CEO Dawn Hudson said. The Academy will continue to workshop the idea, however, leaving open the possibility of a second try in 2020.

News of the new Oscar category prompted almost universally negative reactions last month, with critics arguing that it would inevitably be seen as a consolation prize as another film got the "real" award of Best Picture. There was also confusion over what actually constitutes a "popular" film, considering movies like Get Out, La La Land, and The Martian have been nominated for Best Picture in recent years while also being box office hits. The Academy never fully clarified its intentions with the award before announcing this delay. Brendan Morrow

The Trump administration is seeking to override a rule that prevents immigrant children from being detained for more than 20 days, NBC News reported Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security said it had created a new rule that will allow immigrant children to be detained with their parents indefinitely, and that the rule will go into effect in 60 days. The new rule will circumvent the 1997 Print Chic Couple Tree Hoodie Sleeve Long Pocket Digital for Flores settlement, which determined that immigrant children seeking asylum in the U.S. could not be held for more than 20 days at a time, often leading to children being released with their parents at that time.

Officials tried to avoid those releases earlier this year by separating migrant children from their parents upon arrival in the U.S., but the administration ended that practice after significant backlash, though several hundred children remain separated. Now, a DHS official told NBC News that the new rule is a legal workaround because children will be held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities that are evaluated by third parties.

In an announcement, administration officials said the evaluations will ensure that the facilities "satisfy the basic purpose" of the Flores settlement and keep children safe, while still closing "legal loopholes" that "significantly hinder" the government's ability to "promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country." Tee Short Sleeve Printed Round Neck Note xXwqY7px

Four people were killed in Cincinnati on Thursday after a man opened fire in a downtown bank building lobby, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

The gunman, whom police have not identified, was among those killed, and several others were injured. Shots reportedly rang out at about 9 a.m., while crowds of people headed to work in the busy city center. Witnesses said dozens of police officers arrived at the scene and began exchanging gunfire with the suspect.

Three men and one woman were taken to the local hospital with gunshot wounds, reports the Enquirer. Two died at the hospital, while the others are in serious or critical condition. The shooting is Cincinnati's deadliest since 2013.